


I've Seen You, Beauty

by bakerstreetafternoon



Category: The Beatles
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2017-12-20
Packaged: 2019-02-17 17:33:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13081815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bakerstreetafternoon/pseuds/bakerstreetafternoon
Summary: Paris, 1961.“I know a girl,” I said, as we made our way down rue des Rosiers. I hadn’t any interest in being either a tour guide or a matchmaker until John and Paul came to Paris, but I did know a girl, and John and Paul were always interested in girls.





	I've Seen You, Beauty

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Savageandwise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Savageandwise/gifts).
  * Inspired by [The Song Stuck in my Head](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12276546) by [Savageandwise](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Savageandwise/pseuds/Savageandwise). 



> This is just a tiny little piece that gives a bit of background to savageandwise's beautiful The Song Stuck In My Head, and you should read that first - although the stories make sense on their own as well. And like everything I write, this story is for her too.
> 
> Thanks to Celebratory Penguin for being gentle, insightful, knowledgable and everything you could want in a proofreader.

_“I've seen you, beauty, and you belong to me now, whoever you are waiting for and if I never see you again, I thought. You belong to me and all Paris belongs to me.” - Ernest Hemingway_

*

 

“I know a girl,” I said, as we made our way down rue des Rosiers. I hadn’t any interest in being either a tour guide or a matchmaker until John and Paul came to Paris, but I did know a girl, and John and Paul were always interested in girls.

 “So do I, what do you want, a medal?” John said.

 Paul elbowed him. “Tell us about her then, Jürgen.”

Looking back on it, how polite he was! He still worried, you see, about whether I liked him. I was so partial to Stuart, and Paul and Stuart’s relationship was so fraught that some part of Paul seemed to think it was a contest: people could favor either him or Stuart, not both.

 He needn’t have worried, I liked him fine and in fact I like him still. Paul was always anxious to be liked but it was John who worried me. Sarcasm worries me.

“She’s called Alice,” I told them. “She’s a bit like Astrid but dark. Long dark hair. She’s very clever.” Cleverness always won points with the two of them, cleverness and -

“ _Tits_ , Jürgen, what about her tits?” John asked. He took a packet of pâte de fruit out of the pocket of his jacket and offered it to Paul, who picked through it for a moment to select a piece as we walked.

 “They’re very nice,” I assured him. “Anyway I’ve told her all about you and she’s wild to meet you. She’ll come out to meet us at the Cafe-Royale tonight, if you like.”

John and Paul exchanged glances. I could see them having one of those conversations they used to have, the kind that only needed the glance and no words, but since there were no words I don’t know what was said and can only guess based on what happened later.

“Sure, then,’” John said pleasantly. “Let’s have her.”

 “You’ll try, I’m sure,” Paul said, faux-challenging. “Maybe I’ll hide in the loo a few minutes to give you a fair shot.’

 “He’s delirious! Jürgen, you’ll have to call _les_ men in _les_ white coats.”

 I can see them now as they strolled along the cobbled street in the Jewish quarter. That was the last week they had their English “Ted” hair, the hair that had surprised me when I first saw them that night in Hamburg, the hair that really made them look like rock-and-rollers. Of course, later on everyone would associate the Caesar haircuts I gave them with rock and roll - later on, the Beatles themselves would determine what people associated with rock and roll.

I met them later that night at the Cafe-Royale. I had learned on the first day of their trip that it was pointless to expect them to eat anything adventuresome - they were mostly living on large piles of fried potatoes and the occasional sausage. Well, large piles of fried potatoes are about as French as it gets, so I guess they had an authentic Paris experience.

We were on our second or third glasses of wine when Alice turned up. She was a student at the École des Beaux-Arts, which was why I had thought she might get on with John at least. She reminded me very much of Astrid and was just as beautiful, with long black hair and a sexy little cock to her hips that some very self-assured women get. She was funny and sometimes wicked, too, and she was a true bohemian - one of those with the long skirts and bright blouses, her hair always flowing over her shoulders and breasts and floating in the wind. I thought she looked like a painting, maybe a Klimt.

She appeared in the cafe holding a cigarette, pretty as a Klimt indeed. She started over to our table and I prepared to introduce her to Paul and John, but she ignored them completely and before a word could leave my mouth she started in on me.

 “Comment oses-tu m'apporter à ces garçons sauvages?” she demanded with fury in her voice. “These boys - they look like -”

 I caught her wrist gently and spoke to her in French, not wanting John and Paul to know that she was so offended at their appearance that she wouldn’t even sit down. John understood some French, but I had to guess it was not enough to catch anything from that torrent of vitriol, because he wasn’t a man to take those kinds of insults on the chin, not through any of the years that I knew him. 

Alice scolded me for at least another solid minute, letting me know in no uncertain terms that she would never be seen with such a couple of leather-clad ruffians - ‘wild boys,’ she said - with such stupid hair, and stormed out as all I could do was watch in half-drunk amazement as her skirt flounced away.

 “Trouble in paradise?” Paul asked.

 I said “She said she isn’t interested in rock and roll musicians.”

 “The poor tart’s lost her eyesight,” John said in a mournful tone.

 “Not quite. She didn’t like your- “ I raised a hand to my own head to sketch out a quiff like theirs and smiled apologetically.

“Well, fuck her then. What kind of dodgy twat doesn’t want a rock and roll musician?”

 Paul shook his head, as if feeling terribly sorrowful for Alice’s poor taste. He caught John’s eye again but they didn’t have a full eye-conversation this time, they only laughed together in that private way they had.

“It’s all right, Jürgen,” he said. “We’re on vacation. You needn’t set us up, we can amuse ourselves. Grown lads, you know.”

 “And back home we don’t have to work for it,” John said, and grinned.

*

When we met again, at les Deux-Magots this time, Paul pressed a cartridge of exposed film into my hand and asked me if I could develop it before they left. I had told them that I had a little darkroom in the apartment I was living in then - it had been a water closet or something like that in the long-past days when that old apartment building was new and grand, but it served my purposes just fine.

I was shooting mostly art photos, of course, and didn’t often have occasion to look at tourist pictures so it was at least a little interesting to see the parts of Paris that John and Paul had thought worth photographing. Mostly, though, their pictures were of one another with very few of the typical tourist shots. There was John at La Tour, John at the Louvre - he’d talked about the Louvre all day - Paul wearing John’s glasses, various shots of the two of them in those ridiculous bowler hats. There were many pictures of them lounging at cafe bars looking like any pair of bohemian artists who had come to Paris to make their way in the world.

There were no photos of me. From time to time Paul had simply handed me the camera and asked me to take photos of him and John, but he hadn't asked me to get in them.

The second-to-last photo in the roll was of John sleeping. Tucked in up to his chin, the ironic lines around his mouth were erased and it made him look like a different person, less cocky, very young. It didn’t occur to me to wonder why Paul had taken a photograph of John sleeping until I got to the last photograph in the roll. As I clipped it to the old laundry line and watched it develop, my mouth fell open and I heard Stu’s dry voice in my ear as though he was beside me.

  _They’ll always be like that, it doesn’t matter what I say.  John can’t help himself. You’ll see._

 The last photograph showed them in bed together.

I stared at it, thinking that it was the only interesting photograph in the roll, the only one that was beautiful. Paul had taken it, probably holding out his brother Mike’s little Kodak Instamatic and pressing the shutter, so any good composition in the shot was a random miracle but there it was. Their  heads, smooth and dark with the new haircuts I’d given them, were starkly framed against the white pillowcase where they lay facing one another. Paul’s long lashes lay on his cheeks like black lace, looking at John with hooded eyes in a way that was a bolt to the heart even on the cheap film, a look which made it more than clear that this was no joke or piss-take like so many of the others on the roll. The irony lines were gone from John’s face in this one, too, even though he wasn’t asleep. His hand lay on Paul’s sharp, bare collarbone, starkly possessive in black and white.

The photograph had frozen them at the moment their lips brushed together - it was just a brush, but it was the kind of kiss that felt wrong for me to see. It wasn’t a sloppy show-off kiss but an intimate kiss, a private kiss, a whisper-kiss  - goodnight, I love you, I’ll see you in your dreams.

_John can’t help himself. You’ll see._

I had thought that Stu had meant the way that Paul and John had butted up against each other like tomcats in Hamburg, unable to let each other alone, Paul’s frustration bubbling up on Stu until they had eventually become violent with one another. But this had been a part of it, then, this had always been a part of it.

I looked at that photo for quite a long time, thinking over the last year, thinking that a lot of things had suddenly fallen into place. I looked at it one last time as I put the packet of photos into a manila envelope for Paul, and when I handed him the envelope two days later I studied his face to see if he knew what I’d seen. His expression was as cheerful and bland as he could make it.

I’ve never spoken to anyone about that photograph. The one person I considered telling was Stuart, simply because I wanted to tell him that he had been right - as though he wouldn’t have already known that he was right. _John can’t help himself. You’ll see._

And I still don’t know what Paul was thinking when he gave me that roll of film. Did he think I wouldn’t see the photo? Did he just know I’d be more trustworthy than anyone else who might have developed it? Did he want me to see it - did he want someone, anyone, to see a glimpse of them the way they really were and took an opportunity where he could?

Did he _want_ me to tell Stu?

I’ll never know now, but as I said, when I go to Paris I see them still. All the cobbled streets we went down, the patisserie windows, Marche aux Puces, les Deux-Magots. I did not know them well, especially compared to some, but it’s impossible to go to those places even so many years later without them coming to mind. They were so young, so beautiful, the whole world at their feet - so boldly drawn that I believe they left a mark on Paris as I believe it left a mark on them.

All lovers leave a mark on Paris.

 

*


End file.
